Phillip Tagg - Analysin Popular Music-6

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    E:\M55\ARTICLES\Pm2anal.fm 2001-12-19 17:03 P Tagg, IPM, University of Liverpool

    Ana lysing p opu lar m u s ic:th eory, m e thod an d p ract i ce

    by Philip Tagg

    First pu blished in Popular Music, 2 (1982): 37-65

    P o p u l a r m u s i c a n a l y s i s - w h y ?

    One of the initial problems for any new field of study is the attitude of incredulity itmeets. The serious stud y of pop ular m usic is no exception to th is rule. It is often con-fronted with an attitud e of bemused suspicion imp lying that there is something w eirdabout taking fun seriously or find ing fun in serious things. Such attitud es are of

    considerable interest w hen d iscussing the aims an d method s of popu lar mu sic analysisand serve as an excellent introd uction to this article.

    In announcing the first International Conference on Popular Music Research, held atAmsterd am in Jun e 198i,The Times Diary printed the head line Going Dutch - The Don-nish D isciples of Pop (The Times 16 Jun e 1981). Jud ging from the gen erous u se of in-verted commas, sics and would-you-believe-it turns of phrase, the Times diarist w ascomically baffled by the idea of people getting together for some serious discussionsabout a phenomenon which the average Westerners brain probably spends aroundtwenty-five per cent of its lifetime registering, monitoring and decoding. It should beadd ed that The Times is just as incredu lous about A Yearbook of Popu lar Music(sic) (their sic), in w hich th is seriou s article abou t fun now ap pea rs.

    In annou ncing the same conference on popu lar mu sic research, theN ew Musical Express

    (20 Jun e 1981, p. 63) was so w itty and snap py that th e excerpt can be qu oted in full.Meanwhile, over in Am sterdam th is weekend, high foreheads from the four corners of theearth (Sid an d Dor is Bonkers) will meet for the first International Conference on Pop ular Mu -sic at the University of Amsterdam. In between the cheese and wine parties, serious youngmen and wom en w ith goatee beards and glasses will discuss such vitally importan t issues asGod, Morality and Meaning in the Recent Songs of Bob Dylan.1 Should be a barrel oflaughs...

    This wond erfully ima ginative piece of poetry is itself a great bar rel of laug hs to an yonepresent at the conference with its zero (0 per cent) wine an d cheese p arties, one (0.8 percent) goatee beard and a dozen {38} (10 per cent) bespectacled participants. (As SidBonkers, I do admit to having worn contact lenses). Talks were given by active rockmu sicians, by an ex-N M Ean d Rolling Stonejou rn alist , by r ad io people a nd by Pau l Ol-

    iver, wh o may have w orn glasses but w ho, even if maliciously imagined w ith a goateebeard, horns and a trident, has probably done m ore to increase respect, und erstandingand enthusiasm for the m usic of black Am ericans than theN M Eis ever likely to.

    This convergence of opinion between such unlikely bedfellows as The Times and theNM Eabout the imagined incongruity of popular m usic as an area for serious stud y im-plies one of two th ings. Either pop ular m usic is so worthless that it should n ot be takenseriously (unlikely, since pop journ alists obviou sly rely on the existence of pop ular m u-sic for their livelihood) or academics are so hopeless absent-mindedly mumblinglong Latin word s un der their mortarboards in ivory towers that the prospect of them

    1. No such talk was on the conference programm e! Actually it is the title of Wilfrid Mellerss article in PopularMusic 1 (1981, pp . 143-157).

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    2 P T agg: Analysing Popular Mu sic (1982)

    trying to deal with anything as imp ortant as popu lar mu sic is just as absurd . How ever,The Times an d NM Eare not alone in qu estioning the ability of traditional scholarship todeal with p opu lar mu sic. Here they join forces with no mean nu mber of intellectual

    mu sicians and mu sically interested academ ics.Bearing in m ind the u biquity of mu sic in ind ustrialised capitalist society, its imp ortanceat both nationa l and transn ational levels (see Varis 1975, Chapp le and Garofalo 1977,Frith 1978, Fonogrammen i kultu rpolitiken 1979) and the shar e of popu lar mu sic in all this,the incredible thing is not that academics should start taking the subject seriously butthat they hav e taken such a time getting rou nd to it. Until recently, pu blicly fun ded mu -sicology has passively ignored the sociocultural challenge of trying to inform therecord-buying, Muzak-registering, TV watching and video-consuming public whyand how wh o (from th e private sector) is comm unicating w hat to w hom (in the p ub-lic sector) and w ith w hat effect (apologies to C S Peirce). Even n ow it does very little.

    Nev ertheless, to view th e academ ic w orld as being full of static and eternal ivory tow erstereotypes is to reveal an a historical and strangely d efeatist acceptan ce of the schizo-

    phrenic status quo in capitalist society. It implies atomisation, compartmentalisationand polarisation of the affective and the cognitive, of private and pu blic, individu al andcollective, implicit and explicit, entertaining and worrying, fun and serious, etc. Thenever-the-tw ain-shall-meet synd rom e is totally unten able in the field of pop ular m u-sic (or the arts in general). One d oes not need to be a d on to u nd erstand that there areobjective developments in nineteenth- and twentieth-century music history which de-man d th at changes be ma de, not leas in academic circles.

    {39}These developm ents can be sum ma rised as follow s: (1) a vast increase in the sharemu sic takes in the m oney and time bud gets of citizens in the ind ustrialised w orld; (2)shifts in class structure leading to the ad vent of socioculturally definable group s, suchas young people in student or unemployment limbo between childhood and adult-hood, and their need for collective identity; (3) technological advances leading to the

    dev elopm ent of recording techniqu es capable (for the first time in h istory) of accur atelystoring and allowing for mass d istribution of non-written m usics; (3) transistorisation,microelectronics and all that such ad vances mean to the m ass dissemination of m usic;(5) the development of new musical functions in the audiovisual media (for example,films, TV, video, ad vertising); (6) the non-comm un ication crisis in m odern Westernart m usic and the stagn ation of official art mu sic in historical mou lds; (7) the d evelop-men t of a loud , perm anent, m echanical lo-fi soun dscape (Schafer 1974, 1977) and its re-flection (Riethmller 1976) in electrified music with regular pulse (Bradley 1980); (8)the genera l acceptance of certain Euro- and Afro-American genres as constituting a lin-gua franca of musical expression in a large num ber of contexts within ind ustrialised so-ciety; (9) the gra dua l, histor ically inevitab le replacem ent of intellectu als schoo led solelyin the art mu sic tradition by others exposed to th e same tradition but at the sam e timebrou ght u p on Pr esley, the Beatles and the Stones.

    To those of us w ho d uring th e fifties and sixties played both Scarlatti and sou l, did pal-aeography and Palestrina crosswords as well as working in steelworks, and whowalked across quad s on ou r w ay to the Palais or the p op club, the serious stud y ofpop ular m usic is not a matter of intellectuals turn ing hip or of mod s and ro ckers goingacadem ic. It is a qu estion of (a) getting together tw o equa lly imp ortant p arts of experi-ence, the intellectual and emotional, inside ou r ow n h eads and (b) being able as m usicteachers to face pu pils whose m usical outlook has been crippled by those wh o pr esentserious music as if it could never be fun and fun music as though it could neverhave an y serious imp lications.

    Thus the need for the serious stud y of popu lar mu sic is obvious, while the case for mak -ing it a laughing m atter, although u nd erstandable (itcan be hilarious at times), is basi-

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    P Ta gg: Ana lysing Popular Mu sic (1982) 3

    cally reactionary and will be dispen sed w ith for the rest of this article. This is becausethe aim of what follows is to present a musicological model for tackling problems ofpopu lar mu sic content analysis. It is hoped that this might be of some u se to mu sic

    teachers, musicians and others looking for a contribution towards the understandingof wh y and h ow d oes who commu nicate what to wh om and with w hat effect.{40}

    M u s i c o l o g y a n d p o p u l a r m u s i c r e s e a r c h

    Studying popular music is an interdisciplinary matter. Musicology still lags behindother disciplines in the field, especially sociology. The musicologist is thus at a simul-taneous disadvantage and ad vantage. The advantage is that he/ she can draw on soci-ological research to give the analysis prop er persp ective. Indeed, it shou ld be stated atthe outset that no analysis of musical discourse can be considered complete withoutconsideration of social, psychological, visual, gestural, ritual, technical, historical, eco-nom ic and lingu istic aspects relevant to th e genre, fun ction, style, (re-)perform ance sit-uation and listening attitude connected with the sound event being studied. Thedisadvantage is that musicological content analysis in the field of popular music isstill an un derd eveloped area and someth ing of a missing link (see Schuler 1978).

    M u sic an al y sis an d t he com m u n icat ion proces s

    Let us assum e mu sic to be that form of interhum an comm unication in w hich ind ividu -ally experienceable affective states and p rocesses are conceived and transm i8tted as h u-manly organised nonverbal sound structures to those capable of decoding theirmessage in the form of adequ ate affective and associative respon se (Tagg 1981b). Letus also assum e that m usic, as can be seen in its mod es of perform ance and reception,most frequently requires by its very nature a group of individuals to communicate ei-ther among themselves or with another grou p; thus most m usic (and dan ce) has an in-trinsically collective character not shared by the visual and verbal arts. This shouldmean that m usic is capable of transmitting the affective identities, attitudes an d beh av-

    ioural pattern s of socially definable group s, a phen omen on observed in stud ies of sub-cultures and use by N orth Am erican rad io to determine advertising m arkets (Karshner1971).

    Now , althou gh w e have considerab le insight into socioeconomic, subcultu ral and p sy-chosocial mechanism s influencing the emitter (by m eans of biograph ies, etc.) and re-ceiver of certain types of po pu lar mu sic, we h ave very little explicit information aboutthe chann el, abou t the m usic itself. We know v ery little abou t its signifiers and sig-nifieds, abou t the relations the m usic establishes between emitter and receiver, abouthow a m usical message actually relates to the set of affective and associative conceptspresumably shared by emitter and receiver, and how it interacts with their respectivecultural, social and natural environments. In other words, reverting to the questionwh y and how does wh o say what to w hom and with w hat effect?, we could {41} say

    that sociology answ ers the questions w ho, to wh om and , with some h elp from p sy-chology, with wh at effect and possibly par ts of wh y, but w hen it comes to the rest ofwhy, not to mention the questions what and how, we are left in the lurch, unlessmu sicologists are prep ared to tackle the p roblem (Wed in 1972: 128).

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    4 P T agg: Analysing Popular Mu sic (1982)

    Popular m usic, n otat ion and mu sical formalism

    Fig. 1 Folk, art and popular music: an axiomatic triangle.

    There is no room h ere to define pop ular m usic but to clarify the argu men t I shall es-tablish an axiomatic triangle consisting of folk, art and popular musics. Each ofthese three is distingu ishable from th e other two according to the criteria presen ted inFigur e 1. The argu men t is that pop ular m usic cann ot be analysed using only the trad i-tional tools of musicology because pop ular m usic, unlike art m usic, is (1) conceived forma ss distribution to large and often sociocultu rally heterogeneous grou ps of listeners,(2) stored an d d istributed in non -written form, (3) only possible in an indu strial mon e-tary econom y wh ere it becomes a com mod ity and (4) in capitalist society, subject to thelaws of free enterpr ise, accord ing to w hich it should ideally sell as mu ch as p ossibleof as little as possible to as man y as p ossible. Consideration of these thr ee distinguish-ing m arks imp lies that it is imp ossible to evaluate pop ular m usic along some sort ofPlatonic ideal scale of aesthetic values an d, m ore pr actically, that n otation shou ld notbe the an alysts main source ma terial,. The reason for this is that w hile notation m ay be

    a viable starting point for mu ch art mu sic analysis, in tha t it was the only form of stor-age of over a millennium , popu lar mu sic, not least in its Afro-American guises, is nei-ther conceived nor designed to be stored or distributed as notation, a large number ofimp ortant p aram eters of mu sical expression being either d ifficult or impossible to en-code in trad itional n otation (Tagg 1979: 28-31). This is, howev er, not the on ly pr oblem.

    Allowing for certain exceptions, traditional m usic analysis can be characterised as for-ma list. One of its great d ifficulties (criticised in conn ection w ith the analysis of art m u-sic in Rsing 1977) is relating m usical discour se to the r emaind er of hu man existence inany way, the description of emotive aspects in music either occurring sporadically orbeing avoided altogether. Perhap s these difficulties are in part attribu table to such fac-tors as (1) a kind of exclusivist guild m entality amon gst mu sicians resulting in th e abil-

    CHARACTERISTICFolk

    Music

    Ar t

    Mus ic

    Popular

    M u s i c

    Produced andtransmitted by

    p rim arily p rofessionals x x

    primarily amateu rs x

    Massdistribution

    usual x

    u nu su al x x

    Main mode of s torage

    and d istribution

    oral transmission x

    m usical notation x

    record ed sou nd x

    Type of society in wh ich

    the category of musicmostly occurs

    nom ad ic or agrar ian x

    agrarian or indu strial x

    indu strial x

    Written theoryand aesthetics

    uncommon x x

    com m on x x

    Composer / Author

    anonym ou s x

    non-anonym ou s x x

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    P Ta gg: Ana lysing Popular Mu sic (1982) 5

    ity and/ or lack of will to associate items of m usical expression w ith extramusicalph enom ena; (2) a time-honou red ad herence to notation as the only viable form of stor-ing m usic; (3) a culture-centric fixation on certain n otatable pa ram eters of mu sical ex-

    pression (mostly {42} processual aspects such as form, thematic construction, etc.),wh ich are p articularly imp ortant to th e Western art m usic tradition. This carries w ith ita nonchalance towards other parameters not easily expressed in traditional notation(mostly imm ediate aspects such as sound , timb re, electromusical treatment, ornam en-tation, etc.), which are relatively unimp ortan t or ignored in the ana lysis of art mu -sic but extrem ely impor tant in p opu lar mu sic (Rsing 1981).

    A ffect t heor y an d her m en eu t ics

    Despite the overwhelming d ominance of the formalist tradition in u niversity d epart-ments of musicology, such non-referential thinking should be seen as a historical pa-renthesis in the area of verbal discourse on music, this being bordered on one side bythe Baroque Theory of Affects and on the other by the hermeneutics of music (Zoltai1970: 137-215). The d octrina l straitjacket of Affect Theory, a so rt of com bina tion o f feu-dal absolutism and rationalist curiosity, and its apparent tendency to regard itself asun iversally ap p licable (Lang 1942: 438; Zoltai 1970: 177), rend er it u nsu itable for u se inpop ular m usic analysis wh ich mu st deal with a mu ltitude of langu ages, ranging fromfilm music in the late romantic symphonic style to punk and from middle-of-the-roadpop to the {43} Webernesqu e sonorities of mur d er mu sic in TV thrillers.

    Musical hermen eutics, as a subjectivist, interp retative app roach, is often violently andsometimes justifiably criticised. Ind eed, from time to tim e it can d egenerate into exeget-ic guessw ork an d to intu itively acrobatic read ing betw een the lines. (Good exam plesof th is are to be fou nd in Cohn 1970: 54-55; Melze r 1970: 104, 153; Meller s 1973: 117-118).Nevertheless, hermeneutics can, if used w ith discretion and together with other m usi-cological app roaches, make an imp ortant contribution to the ana lysis of pop ular m usic,not least because it treats music as a symbolic system and encourages synaesthetic

    thinking on th e part of the analyst, a prerequ isite for the found ation of verbalisable hy-potheses and a necessary step in escaping from the p rison of sterile formalism.

    The semiology and sociology of music

    The transfer of structuralist and semiotic methods, derived from linguistics, to therealm of m usic seemed initially highly p rom ising (see Bernstein 1976). How ever, sev-eral m usicologists of semiotic bent (for examp le Francs 1972, Lerdah l and Jackendoff1977, Keiler 1978 and Stoanov a 1978), have p ointed out that m odels constru cted to ex-plain the denotative aspects of verbal language can by no means be transplantedwh olesale into the field of m usic w ith its conno tative, associative-affective character ofdiscourse (see Shep herd 1977). Unfortunately, a great d eal of linguistic form alism hascrept into the sem iology of mu sic, the extrageneric question of relationship s between

    musical signifier and signified and between the musical object under analysis and so-ciety being r egard ed as susp ect (N attiez 1974: 67), or as su bord inate to congen eric rela-tionsh ips within the m usical object (Nat tiez 1974: 72-73 and 1975: 414-416).

    The empirical sociology of music, apart from having acted as a sorely needed alarmclock, rousing m usicologists from their culture-centric and ethnocentric slumbers, an dnotifying them of musical habits among st the pop ulation at large, can also provid e val-uable information abou t {44} the functions, uses and (with the help of psychology) theeffects of the gen re, performa nce or m usical object und er analysis. In th is way, resu ltsfrom perceptual investigation and other data about musical habits can be used forcrosschecking ana lytical conclusions an d for pu tting the wh ole analysis in its sociolog-ical and psychological perspectives.

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    6 P T agg: Analysing Popular Mu sic (1982)

    It is clear that a h olistic app roach to the an alysis of pop ular m usic is the only viable oneif one w ishes to reach a full un der stand ing of all factors intera cting w ith the conception,transmission an d reception of the object of study. N ow although su ch an ap proach ob-

    viously requires multidisciplinary knowledge on a scale no individual researcher canever hop e to embrace, there are neverth eless degrees of inter- and intrad isciplinary out-look, not to mention the p ossibilities afford ed by interd isciplinary team wo rk. An inter-esting ap pr oach in this context is th at of Assafievs Inton ation Theory (Asafyev 1976),wh ich embraces all levels of mu sical expression an d perception, from onomatop oeicsignals to complex formal structures, without placing them on either overt or covertscales of aesthetic value jud gemen t. Inton ation theory also tries to pu t mu sical analysisinto historical, cultural, social and psychological persp ective and seems to be a viablealternative to both congeneric formalism and unbridled hermeneutic exegesis, at leastas p ractised in the r ealm of ar t m usic by A safyev h imself (1976: 51 ff.) and , in conn ec-tion w ith folk m usic, by Marthy (1974). Intonation th eory has also been ap plied to th estudy of popular music by Mhe (1968) and Zak (1979). However, the terminology ofintonation th eory seems to lack stringency, intonation itself being given a diversity of

    new meanings by Assafyev himself in addition to those it already possesses (Ling1978a). It seems w ise to adop t the gener ally holistic and dyn am ically non-idealist ap-proa ch of intonation theory in pop ular m usic analysis, less wise to adopt its terminol-ogy, at least in the West w here it is still little know n.

    There are also a num ber of other imp ortant p ublications within n on-formalist mu sicol-ogy which combine semiological, sociological, psychological and hermeneutic ap-proaches, thereby offering ideas which might be useful in the analysis of popularmu sic. Apart from pioneer w ork carried ou t in prew ar Germ any (see Rsing 1981, n.11)and by Francs (1972), I should mention in this context publications by Karbuicky(1973), Rsing (1977), Ling (1978b) and Tarasti (1978). How ever, in non e of these p ub -lications are the analytical models applied to popular music; this still remains an ex-trem ely difficult area, as Rsing (1981) points ou t in his critiqu e of several West German

    attemp ts at tackling th e problem . The d ifficulties are also clearly epitomised by th e sur-prising dearth of analytical methods developed in the Anglo-Saxon world. {45}

    In an interesting analysis of a fourteen-minu te LP track by an East Germa n rock grou p,Peter Wicke (1978) pu ts forward convincing argum ents for treating pop ular m usic withnew , non-formalist analytical meth ods. Wickes analysis poses qu estions ar ising froman ap proa ch similar to that used here. Therefore, in an effort to find som e epistemolog-ical gap s I shall proceed to attem pt th e establishm ent of a theoretical basis for pop ularmu sic analysis.

    A n a n a l y t i c a l m od e l f o r p o p u l a r m u s i c

    The conceptual an d method ological tools for pop ular m usic analysis presented here arebased on some results of cur rent research (Tagg 1979, 1980, 1981a, b). The m ost imp or-

    tant p arts of this analytical mod el are (1) a checklist of param eters of mu sical expres-sion, (2) the establishment of musemes (minimal units of expression) and musemecompounds by means of interobjective comparison, (3) the establishment of figure/ground (melody/ accomp animent) relationships, (4) the transformational analysis ofmelod ic phrases, (5) the establishm ent of pa tterns of extramu sical process, and (6) thefalsification of conclusions b y m eans of hy poth etical substitution. These p oints w ill beexplained an d som e of them exemp lified in th e rest of this article. I shall draw examp lesmainly from my w ork on the title theme of the KojakTV series (Tagg 1979) and on Ab-bas hit record ing Fernando (Tagg 1981a).

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    P Ta gg: Ana lysing Popular Mu sic (1982) 7

    Fig. 2. Methodological paradigm for analysis of affect in popular music.2

    2. Thanks to Sven And ersson, Institute for the Theory of Science, University of Gteborg, for help in construct-ing this model.

    SCFS

    Socioculturalfield of stud y

    Access problem:select method an d m a-

    terial

    Emitter interests,needs and aims

    Mu sical channel Receiver in terests,needs and aims

    music music music music

    A O

    IM CPMFAP M P

    PPMP

    IOCM

    IM CPMFAP M P

    PPMP

    Hypo-theticalSubsti-tution

    verbalisation

    comments on a imsmu sic analysedin explicit terms comments on r eactions

    AO as expression of re-lationships

    Emitter - ReceiverEmitter - SCFS

    Receiver - SCFSAO - SCFS

    SCFS

    Emitter interests,needs and functions

    Receiver inter ests,needs and fun ctions

    IDEOLOGICAL

    HERMENEUTICSEMIOTIC

    AO = analysis objectIOCM = interobjective comparison materialHS = hypothe t ica l subst i tu t ionIMC = item of musical codePMFA =par amu sical fields of associationPMP = pa t te rn s of musica l processPPMP = pa t te rn s of param usica l processSCFS =sociocultu ra l field of studym u s i c = mu sic as conception ( = thought , pur pose, mind)m u s i c= music as nota t ion ( = write)m u s i c = mu sic as sounding object ( = mat t e r as opposed to mind)m u s i c = music as perception ( = appear , seem)

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    8 P T agg: Analysing Popular Mu sic (1982)

    First, how ever, this analytical process should be p ut into the context of a scientific par-ad igm. The discussion that follows shou ld be read in conjunction with figure 2. A read -ing dow n th e centre of this diagram, following th e bold lines, takes one throu gh th e

    pr ocess of analysis. Down the sides, joined b y thinn er lines, are the extram usical factorswh ich feed into the p rocess of prod uction of the m usic and, at the level of ideology,mu st also be taken into account by the an alyst. First, how ever, let us concentrate on th eherm eneu tic/ semiological level, read ing dow n Figure 2 as far as the mom ent of ver-balisation.

    M et hod ol og ical par ad igm for popu lar m u sic an al y sis

    It should be clear that pop ular m usic is regard ed as a sociocultu ral field of study (SFCSat top an d b ottom of Figure 2). It shou ld also be clear from Figure 2 that there is an ac-cess problem involving th e selection of an alysis object (hereinafter AO) and analyticalmethod. Choice of study object and method are determined by the researchers men-tality his or her world view, ideology, set of values, objective possibilities, etc., in-fluenced in their turn by the researchers and the disciplines objective position in a

    cultural, historical and social {46} context. From the previous discussion it should beclear that the analysis of popu lar mu sic is regarded h ere as an important contributionto musicology and to cultural studies in general. This opinion is based on the generalview of modern music history presented above (see p. 2 [39]).{47}

    {47} The choice of AO is determined to a large extent by practical methodological con-siderations. At the present stage of enquiry this means two things. Fertilise, it seemswise to select an AO w hich is conceived for and received by large, socioculturally het-erogeneous groups of listeners rather than music used by more exclusive, homogene-ous grou ps, simply because it is more logical to stud y w hat is generally communicablebefore trying to und erstand par ticularities. Secondly because, as we hav e seen, conge-neric form alism has ru led the m usicological roost for some time and because the dev el-opm ent of new types of extrageneric analysis is a d ifficult matter, dem and ing some

    caution, it is best that AOs w ith relatively clear extram usical fields of association (here-inafter EMFA) be singled out at this stage.

    The final choice to be mad e before actual analysis begins is wh ich stage(s) in the m usi-cal comm un ication process to study. Reasons for discarding m usic as notation (music)have alread y been pr esented. Music as perceived b y listeners (music) and as conceivedby the comp oser and/ or mu sician before actual performance (mu sic) are on the otherhand both highly relevant to the study of popular music, since their relations to eachother, to the sound ing object (mu sic) and to th e general sociocultura l field of stud y areall vital parts of the persp ective into w hich any conclusions from th e analysis of otherstages in the m usical commu nication process mu st be p laced. N evertheless, howeverimportan t these aspects may be (and they arevital), they can only be mentioned in pass-ing here, being referred to the ideological part of the paradigm which follows the

    herm eneu tic-semiological stage.Thus, choosing the soun ding object (music) as our starting p oint, we can now d iscussactual analytical method .

    H er m en eu t ic- sem iol og ical m et hod

    The first method ological tool is achecklist of parameters of musical expression . Having dis-cussed general aspects of the commu nication process and any forms of simu ltaneousextramu sical expression connected w ith the AO, it is a good id ea to make som e sort oftranscription of the music , taking into consideration a mu ltitud e of mu sical factors. Indr astically abr idged form (from Tagg 1979: 68-70), the checklist includ es:

    1. Aspects of time: duration of AO an d relation of this to any other simultaneous forms

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    P Ta gg: Ana lysing Popular Mu sic (1982) 9

    of comm un ication; du ration of sections w ithin the AO; pulse, tem po, metre, perio-dicity; rhyth mic texture and motifs.

    2. Melodic aspects: register; pitch range; rhyth mic m otifs; tonal vocabulary; contour;

    timbre.{48}3. Orchestrational aspects: type an d n um ber of voices, instru men ts, parts; technicalaspects of performan ce; timbre; phra sing; accentu ation.

    4. Aspects of tonality and textu re: tonal centre an d ty pe of tonality (if any); harm onicidiom ; harm onic rhythm ; typ e of harm onic chan ge; chord al alteration; relation-ships between voices, parts, instruments; compositional texture and method.

    5. Dyn amic aspects: levels of sound strength ; accentuation; aud ibility of parts.6. A coustical aspects: characteristics of (re-)performance venue; degree of reverbera-

    tion; distance between sound source and listener; simultaneous extraneoussound.

    7. Electromusical and mechanical aspects: pan ning, filtering, com pressing, ph asing, dis-tortion, d elay, mixing, etc; mu ting, pizzicato, tongu e flutter, etc. (see 3, above).

    This list does not need to be applied slavishly. It is merely a way of checking that noimportant parameter of musical expression is overlooked in analysis and it can be ofhelp in d etermining the p rocessual structure of the AO. This is because some param e-ters will be absent, while others will be either constant d uring the comp lete AO (if theyare constant during other pieces as well, such a set of AOs will probably constitute astyle see Fabbri 1982) or they w ill be variable, this constituting both the im med iateand processual interest of the AO, not only as a p iece in itself but also in relation to oth-er m usic. The checklist can also contribute to an accura te description ofmusemes. Theseare minimal units of expression in any given musical style (not the same definition asin Seeger 1977) and can be established by the an alytical procedu re ofinterobjective com-parison (hereinafter IOC).

    The inherently alogogen ic character of musical discourse is the main reason for u singIOC. The musicologists eternal dilemma is the need to use words about a nonverbal,non-denotative art. This app arent d ifficulty can be turned into an ad vantage if at thisstage of the analysis one discards words as a metalanguage for music and replacesthem w ith other mu sic. This means u sing the reverse side of a phrase coined by in apoem by Gran Sonnevi (1975): music cannot be explained away it cant even becontrad icted except by comp letely new mu sic.3 {49}Thus using IOC means describingmu sic by m eans of other music; it means comparing the AO with other m usic in a rel-evant style and w ith similar fun ctions. It wor ks in the following w ay

    If an analytical approach establishing consistency of response to the same AO playedto a nu mber of respond ents is called intersubjective, then an interobjectiveapproach isthat w hich establishes similarities in mu sical structure between th e AO and oth er mu -sic. Establishing similarities between an A O an d other pieces of mu sic can d one by in-divid ual an alysts on th eir own , referring to the checklist. The scope of the interobjectivecomparison material (=IOCM) can, however, be widened considerably by asking otherpeople to do the same. This process establishes a bank of IOCM which, to give someexamples, can am oun t to arou nd 350 pieces in the case of the Kojak title theme andabout 130 in relation to Abbas Fernando.

    The next step is to search the IOCM for m usical elemen ts (items of m usical code: IMC)similar to those foun d in th e AO. These elemen ts are often extremely short (m usem es),or else consist of general sonorities or of overall expressional constants. Particularmusemes, motifs and general sonorities in both the AO and the IOCM which corre-spon d m ust th en be related to extramu sical form s of expression. Such relationship s can

    3. Musiken | kan inte bortfrklaras. | Det gr inte ens att sga emot, | annat n | med helt ny musik.

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    10 P Ta gg: An alysing Popular M usic (1982)

    be established if pieces in the IOCM share an y comm on d enom inators of extramu sicalassociation in th e form of visual or verbal m eaning. If they do, th en th e objective corre-spon den ces established betw een the items of m usical code in th e analysis object (AO/

    IMC) and those in the IOCM (IOCM/ IMC), and betw een the mu sical code of the IOCM(IOCM/ IMC) and its extram usical fields of association (IOCM/ EMFA), lead to th e con-clusion tha t there is a dem onstrable state of correspond ence between the items of mu -sical code in th e analysis object 9AO./ IMC) and th e extramu sical fields of associationconnected to th e interobjective comp arison m aterial (IOCM/ EMFA) also of cour se,between IOCM/ IMC and AO/ EMFA (see Fig. 3).

    Fig. 3. Hermeneutic correspondence by means of interobjective comparison {50}.

    There are obvious p itfalls in th is method of determ ining m usical mean ing. Just as n o-one wou ld presum e the same m orphem e to mean the same thing in two d ifferent lan-guages (for instance, French and English [wi:] as oui and w e respectively), so it wou ldbe absurd to presum e that, say, the identical B$13 chord will mean the same in nine-teenth-century operetta (Examp le 1a) as in bebop (Examp le 1b).{50}

    To overcome su ch difficulties, IOCM should be restricted to m usical genres, fun ctionsand styles relevant to the AO . Thu s, in d ealing w ith pu nk rock, IOCM w ould be n eedto be confined to pop and rock from the sixties and after, whereas the IOCM used inconnection with middle-of-the-road pop, film music, etc. can be far larger, due to theeclectic nature of such mu sics and the h eterogeneity of their aud iences.

    The same kind o f confusion m ight also result in d escribing What Shall We Do With TheDru nken Sailoras sad an d He Was Despised from Hn delsM essiah as hap py, just be-

    cause minor is supp osed to be sad and major happy as though these particular spe-cificities of mu sical language w ere in some w ay m ore importan t than others

    Ha ving extracted the various IMCs of the AO (thirteen main m usem es for Kojak, ten forFernando), their affectual mean ing in associative verbal form sh ould be corroborated orfalsified. Since it is impossible or totally impractical to construct psychological testmod els isolating the effects {51}of one m usem e in an y listening situation, it is suggestedthat hyp otheses of mu sematic meaning be tested by means of a technique well knownfrom su ch pr actices as ma joring, minor ing, jazzing u p and rocking u p and app liedby Bengtsson (1973: 221, ff.) to illustrate theories on musical processes. This techniqueis called hypothetical substitu tion and is best explained by examp le.

    AO

    IMC

    IOCM

    IMC

    IOCM

    EMFA

    AO

    EMFA

    objective states of correspondence

    demonstrable states of correspondence

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    P Ta gg: An alysing Popular Mu sic (1982) 11

    The Swed ish n ational anthem (Du gam-la, du fria), together with most patrioticsongs and hym ns (whatever their mu si-cal origins4), can be assumed to be of atraditionally solemn a nd positively dig-nified yet confident character. Further-more, it can be assumed that there is

    great musematic similarity betweenmost national anthems.

    .To test these assu mp tions, it is nec-essary to alter the various parame-ters of musical expression one byone, in order to pinpoint what partof the mu sic actually carries the sol-emn-dignified-confident affect. Us-ing th e first melodic ph rase (Ex. 2) asa starting point, hyp othetical substi-tution (HS) can falsify the theorythat (a) the melod ic contour, (b) the

    melodic relationship of the initialupbeat-downbeat5 and (c) the keyand the intervallic relationship ofthe melody to the tonic are instru-men tal in the tran smission of the as-sumed affective meaning. In allthr ee cases (Exx. 3a, b, c) the o rigina lmelody has been changed . The dr as-tically altered HS of Example 4abears nonetheless a striking resem-blance to the Marseillaise and couldhave been made to sound like The

    Stars and S tripes for Ever, God Save theQueen or the Int ernationale. The sec-ond HS (Ex. 3b) show s the first inter-val as a rising major sixth from fifthto major third, the m ost characteris-tic leap in the Soviet national an-them, w hile the third H S (3c) sound slike a mixture of musemes fromsuch labour movement rousers asBandiera Rossa and Venceremos. It

    4. The Swedish national anthem took its tune from an old folk song with naughty lyrics.

    Ex. 2.

    Ex. 1. a {50} Ex. 1. b

    Example 3

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    12 P Ta gg: An alysing Popular M usic (1982)

    also resembles the release of the Revolutionary Funeral M arch , Beethovens setting ofSchillers Ode to Joy and the trium phan t chorus from H ndels Judas M accabeus, not tomention the send h er victorious phrase from the U K national anthem. {52} It is, how -

    ever, possible to corroborate assumptions about solemnity, dignity and confidence bychanging the phrasing (Ex. 3d), the tempo (3e), the lyrics (3f) and the time signature(3g).

    By changing the phrasing to staccato, the melody loses much of its dignity, becomingmor e like a Perez Prad o cha-cha-cha (Ex. 3d).6{53} By increasing the pu lse rate to an al-legro of 130 or m ore, dignity, solemnity and confiden ce become a b it rushed ; by low er-ing it to an adagio pulse of forty-two, the confidence turns into something dirge-like(3e). Solemnity seem s also to be d estroyed by th e substitu tion of un dign ified lyrics,resulting in something more like blasphemous versions of hymns (3f), and also by re-taining the original tempo w hile stating the tune in triple metre at 140 bpm , thus w ar-ranting a waltz accompanim ent (3g).

    It would also have been possible to alter the dynamics to, say, pianissimo, to give the

    harm onies the sharpened or flattened ad ded notes characteristic of chord s in bebop, topu t the melody through a fuzz box, harmon iser or ring modu lator, into the minor keyor, say, some gapped Balkan folk mode. The original melody could also have beenplayed at an altered pitch on bassoon, p iccolo, celesta, synthesiser, hu rd y-gurd y, bag-pipes, steel guitar or kazoo; it could also hav e been accomp anied by a rock band , crum-horn consort or by offbeat hand claps. There is an infinite number of HSs which cancorroborate or falsify correspond ences betw een conclusions abou t mu sematic meaning(AO/ IMC IOCM/ EMFA). However, from the examples presented here it is at leastclear that the last four p aram eters of mu sical expression (Exx. 3d,e,f,g) are more im por-tant d eterminan ts of the affective pr operties of dignity, solemn ity and confiden ce thanthe first three (Exx. 3a,b,c), even thou gh chan ge in m elodic contou r w as far easier to de-tect in n otation.

    Having established extramusical meaning at the micro level, one should proceed tothe explanation of the ways m usemes are combined , simu ltaneously and successively.Unlike verbal language, where complexities of affective association can generally onlybe expressed through a combination of d enotation an d connotation, mu sic can expresssuch complexities through simultaneously heard sets of musemes. Several separatelyanalysable mu semes are combined to form wh at the listener experiences as an integralsoun d en tity. Such mu seme stacks can be seen as a vertical cross-section th rou gh animaginary score. Subjectively they seem to have n o du ration, never exceeding th e limitsof presen t time experience in m usic; objectively this m eans th ey are n ever longer thanthe length of a musical phrase, which may be rou ghly defined as th e du ration of a nor-mal inhalation plus exhalation (Wellek 1963: 109). In popular music, museme stackscan often be found to correspond to the concept of soun d, one of whose characteristicsis a hierarchy of dualisms consisting, firstly, of the main relationship betw een m elodyand accomp animent (which may be interpreted as a relationship between figure andground, individual(s) and environment), and, secondly, subsidiary relationships be-tween bass (plus dru ms) and other accomp anying parts. The {54}relative imp ortance ofsimultaneous mu semes and their combined affectual message, shown as a theoreticalmodel in Figure 4, can be exemplified by the affectual paradigm of the first melodicphrase in the Kojakthem e (Fig 5).

    5. This seems to contrad ict Marthy (1974: 224-7, 241, ff.). The initial interval (the initium intonation of plain-chant, for examp le) should n ot be confused with A safyevs various usages of th e word intonation. Asafyevcalls this typ e of initial interval vvodniy ton (= introductory tone).

    6. See Prad os Patricia, RCA Victor 47-7245, no.1 on th e H ot 100, 1958. See also Tom my Dorsey s Tea for Two Cha-Cha, Decca 30704, no. 7 n t he H ot 100, 1958.

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    P Ta gg: An alysing Popular Mu sic (1982) 13

    Fig. 4. Model for analysis of museme stacks

    There is no room here to account in d etail for stages of mu sematic analysis leading tothe associative wor ds found in Figu re 5 (see Tagg 1979: 102-47). The exam ple is includ -ed m erely to make m ore concrete a little of this otherw ise theoretical presentation.

    Fig. 5. Analysis of museme stack in the Kojak theme, bars 5-8

    Fig. 6. Deep structure of melodic phrases {55}

    {55} Having established correspondence between on the one hand static items of mu-sical expression (mu semes and mu seme stacks) in the AO an d, on the other h and , theEMFAs, of the IOCM which leads to conclusions about the relationship betweenthese items as signifiers and their signifieds it is also necessary to d etermine th eproc-essual meaning of the AO. Thanks to the melody-accompanim ent du alism of much p op-ular music (see Mhe 1968: 53, 67; Marthy 1974: 22; Tagg 1979: 123-124, 142-147), inwh ich there are rarely more than tw o parts with m elodic ma terial, the remaining voiceseither executing riffs or sustaining notes or chords, the way to determine the relativesyntactic imp ortance of ind ividu al mu semes along th e horizon tal time axis is reason-ably simple.

    MelodyType of

    relationAccompaniment

    a call to action andattention, strong, indi-vidual movement , up

    and ou tward s: viri le,energetic and heroic,leading to und ulat ing

    swaying calm and con-fidence someth ingindividual, male, mar-

    t ial and h eroic

    s tands outagainst, isheard above,

    is strongerthan, isengaged in

    dialoguewi t h

    BassType of

    relationOther par ts

    energy, excitement,

    desultory u nrest: maleaggressiveness, threatof subcultu ral environ-

    ment in large NorthAmerican city

    is part

    of, rum -blesbelow,

    is heardthrough

    general , constant, bus-

    tling activity: agitated ,pleasant, vibrant,luminous , modern,

    urban American:sometimes jerky,unr esting, excit ing

    Type of relation

    Melody

    Other par t s

    Accompaniment

    Type of relation

    Bass

    MP

    (musical phrase)

    TM

    (terminal motif)

    IM

    (initial motif)

    M

    (museme)M M M

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    14 P Ta gg: An alysing Popular M usic (1982)

    Fig. 7. Generative analysis of melodic line in first full melodic phrase of the Kojak theme {56-57}

    It is in fact possible to construct a mod el according to w hich any m elodic phrase can be

    generated in keeping w ith the transformational norms to w hich the A O belongs (seeFig. 6). This does not imply that there are hard and fast rules about the way in whichmelodic phrases are actually generated. The model is a purely theoretical conception,wh ich helps u s find ou t the syntactical meaning of m elodic ph rases. A generative anal-ysis of the first fully stated m elodic phrase from the Kojak them e (Fig. 7) should m akethis clearer. Starting from the original pitch idea sh ow n in Figure 7, an infinite nu m berof transformations are possible, Two of these, simply using different sequences ofmu semes, are suggested in Examp les 4 and 5. These examples are both melodic non-sense; neither the mere sum, nor the hap hazard perm utation of musemes can constitutethe syn tactical mean ing of melod ic phrases. Instead it is their specific type of contigui-ty, their type of overlap-elision according to the law of good continuation (Meyer1956) and that of implication (Narmour 1977), that give specific meaning to the

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    P Ta gg: An alysing Popular Mu sic (1982) 15

    phr ase. This can be seen in a comp arison of the original melodic phrase of the Kojakthem e (Ex. 6) and a HS in which the m idd le musem e, together with its transformationby prop ulsive dou ble repetition, has been replaced w hile all other elements have been

    retained (Ex. 7).{58} In this way it is possibleto distinguish betw een the af-fectual syntax of the originalversion and that of the HS.The d ifferences can be verbal-ised as follows. Example 6:(bar 1) a strong, virile call toattention and action up ward sand outwards | (bar 2) undu -lates, sways calm and confi-dent, gaining momentum tolead into | (bars 3 and 4)something strong, broad, in-dividu al, male, martial, hero-ic and definite. Example 7:(bar 1) a strong, virile call toattention and action up ward sand outwards | (bar 2) rede-scends smoothly to | (bar 3)something strong, broad, in-

    dividual, male, martial and heroic which grows in height and intensity, driving for-ward to | (bar 4) a confident p oint of rest. In short: although these two melodic phrasescontain the same mu sical material, the ord er in w hich the material is presented and theway in w hich its constituent p arts are elided into each other are both instrum ental in

    determ ining the d ifference in affectual mean ing.Climbing further up the structural hierarchy from the m icrocosm of musemes, throughmelod ic ph rases, we arrive at the point wh ere larger patterns of mu sical process (PMP)can be examined. This area is generally regard ed as the private hu nting groun d of for-malist mu sicology with its soph isticated conceptual app aratu s for discussing thema ticgermination, mutation and development. However, as Chester (1970) has suggested,there are clear differences between the extensional type of musical discourse to befound in the heyday of the sonata {59} form an d th e intensional blocks through wh ichmu ch popu lar music is structured in a much more immed iate way.7

    Nevertheless, this does not mean that patterns of musical process are a simple matterin p opu lar m usic analysis (see Wicke 1978, Tagg 1979). Althou gh block sh ifts (simulta-neous changes in several parameters of musical expression) are reasonably clear injoin s between verse an d chorus, A an d B sect ion s, etc., th e total m eaning o f stra ightfor-ward patterns of reiteration and recapitulation can often be more th an their d eceptivesimplicity su ggests. (For d iscussion of some of the p rocesses involved , see Tagg 1979:217-29). The situation becomes even more complex when there is incongruence be-tween musical processes and extramusical processes (PEMP: visual images or words,for instance) in th e same AO . Only a d epth analysis of simultan eity, staggering or in-congruence of change and return in both musical and extramusical processes withinthe AO can actually reveal the true n atur e of the m usical discour se. The sort of probleminvolved here is probably best explained by an example.

    7. For a more detailed discussion of extensional and intensional structures, see Chamb ers 1982:29-30.

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    16 P Ta gg: An alysing Popular M usic (1982)

    In Abbas Fernando ,8 patterns of musical and extramusical process seem reasonablyclear at first sight. The song h as two p arts: instru men tal plus ver se (V) and choru s (C).The ord er of events is V V C V C C. By m eans of mu sematic analysis the verse can be

    said to conjure u p a p ostcard picture of a youn g European wom an alone against a back-cloth of a plateau in th e high An des. Periodicity, vocal delivery, lack of bass and d rum s,and other m usical aspects say that she is sincere, wor ried, involved in a long-ago-and-far-away environment. The word s of the verse und erline this mood : she has taken p art,together w ith her Fernand o, in a vagu ely-referred -to freed om fight. The mu sic of thechorus can be said to represent here-and-now in pleasant, modern, comfortable, lei-surely surround ings; the youn g European wom an is pleasantly nostalgic. The word sare congruently nostalgic and totally devoid of the concrete references (guns, buglecalls, Rio Grand e, etc.) mentioned in the v erse. Everything in the an alysis seems rela-tively simple so far, and jud ging from the w ords of the chorus, this could be q uite apr ogressive song.

    There was someth ing in the air that night, the stars were brigh t, Fernan do,They were shining there for you and me, for liberty, Fernando;

    Though w e never though t that w e could lose, theres no regrets:If I had to d o the same again, I would , my friend , Fernan do.

    {60} The only trouble is that the musical element corresponding to this nostalgia andlonging to retu rn to the exotic environ men t (Ex. 9) is a highly ambigu ous m usem e, fornot on ly is its falling triton e (markedx) a stereoty pe o f long ing (for IOCM see Ex. 10a,b, c) but also a typical precad ential sign of the imm inent relaxation of tension (see Ex.11a, b). A depth analysis of the patterns of musical process in Fernando reveals thatwh en the am biguous m useme occurs at the start of the chorus it has a clearly longingcharacter (Ex. 8), since it cannot b e precad ential wh en it not on ly initiates the p hrase bu talso the w hole section.

    8. Epic EPM 4036, no. 1 in the UK, 1976. Also on LP Abbas Greatest Hits Epic EPC 69128, 51 weeks on UK LPcharts. As a single in the USA (Atlantic 45-3346) sixteen weeks in the Hot 100. A short analysis of this tunewas alread y pu blished as Tagg 1981a, this version being rad ically expand ed an d rew ritten as Tagg 1991.

    {60}

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    P Ta gg: An alysing Popular Mu sic (1982) 17

    However, when it re-curs at the end of thechorus, it still adm itted-

    ly starts the melodicphrase but it is at thesame tim e in a typicallyprecadential position ofannouncing relaxationof tension and thereforeno real longing. This isbecause it occurs to-wards the end of amuch longer but equal-ly well-entrenched m u-sical process, that of afamiliar VI-II-V-I circle-

    of-fifths finish (Ex. 11).This means that, where-as the words say If Ihad to go back and fightfor freedom in LatinAmerica, I would, the

    mu sic expresses the affective attitud e I may be longing for someth ing here at h ome bu tIm r eally quite content w ith things as th ey are.{61}

    Difficulties in interpreting p atterns of mu sical process can also be found further u p th eprocessual hierarchy in the same song. Ostensibly, three main processes are to befound . The first an d third move from the sincere-worrying-and-invovlement-about-fighting-for-freedom-in-the-sierras sphere to the world of here-and-now-at-home in

    pleasant, comfortable surrou nd ings, reminiscing w ith relief (that is V C); the secon dprocess moves in the opposite direction (C V). However, not only are there moreshifts from verse to choru s than v ice versa, there is also an overall processfrom moreAnd es (verse) and less soft disco (choru s (the first ha lf of the song ) toless And esand mor e soft disco (the second half). A pr ocessual H S reversing th is order of eventsleads to a totally different statement of emotiona l involvem ent in mu sical terms.

    At this poin t in the an alytical mod el we are p oised on th e brink of ideological critiqu e,the next and final step in the m ethod ological parad igm p resented ear lier (see Fig. 2).{62}

    Ideol og ical cr it iqu e

    This part of the stud y is strictly speaking ou tside the jurisdiction of the typ e of textualanalysis sketched above. How ever, it seems imp ortant, if only in passing an d by wa y

    of summ ary, to pose a few qu estions arising ou t of the sort of musem atic analysis illus-trated there. These questions also put the analytical model presented so far into abroader p erspective.

    The results of the d etailed mu sema tic ana lyses of both Kojakan d Fernando (Tagg 1979,1981a) showed that this mainstream p opu lar mu sic was able to carry messages which,at a p reconscious, affective and associative level of thou ght, w ere able to relate types ofpersonality, environments and events to emotional attitudes, implicit evaluations andpattern s of affective resp onse. In the case ofKojak, for examp le, the mu sic wa s foun d toreinforce a basically m onocentric view of the w orld a nd to em ph asis affectively the fal-lacy that the n egative experience of a hostile urban environm ent can be overcome sole-ly by means of an individualist attitude of strength and go-it-alone heroism. In

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    18 P Ta gg: An alysing Popular M usic (1982)

    Fernando, a similar sort of monocentricity prev ails, but the threat an d w orry epitom isedby oppression, hunger and rebellion under neo-colonialism are warded off by theadoption of a tourist attitude (most strikingly expressed in the spatial panning, which

    has ethnic quena flutes in th e stereo wings an d the West Europ ean vocalist up centrefront a HS reversing these positions could have been interesting!) and by nostalgicremin iscences heard against a familiar hom e accom pan iment of soft disco (these el-ements gaining a repressive,Angst-dispelling u pp er hand ).

    Obvious qu estions arising from su ch results are of the following typ e. How do emitterand receiver relate to the attitud es and imp licit ideologies which seem to be en codedin the analysed channel? Starting with the emitter we might ask how, as far as theemitter is concerned, th e conception an d comp osition of th ese affectively encoded at-titud es are influenced by th e circulation of capital in the pop ular cultur e indu stry. Doesthis connect with the dem and for quick tu rnover and the creation of prod uct capableof eliciting im med iate aud ience reaction leading to such tu rnover? If so, how aw are isthe emitter of these pr essures? Is there an y conscious or u nconscious self-censorshipat this stage? It seems probable, for example, that the production of much film music,including titles and signature tunes is influenced by a need to follow well-entrenchedstereotypes of affective code, in therms of both musematic structures and the implicitattitudes conveyed by such structures when connected in a stereotypic fashion to ex-tram usical phen omen a (see Tagg 1980). Can su ch tend encies really be seen as a sort ofevil conspiracy an d as the r eflection of a conscious ideological position on th e par t ofthe emitter? Is it not m ore likely that they sh ould be attributed to the objective socialand cultural p osition of the emitter in relation to th e mu sic business, to the receiverand to society in general? {63}

    Turning to the receiving end of the comm unication p rocess, we might ask how the m u-sical statemen t of imp licit attitud es pr evalent in society at large affects those listeningto such cultur ally eclectic and heterogeneou sly distributed ty pes of mu sic as title tun esand midd le-of-the-road p op. Are the attitudes and behaviour patterns implied in suchmu sic as Kojakan d Fernando actually capa ble of reinforcing th e attitudes an d beh aviourpatterns implied by prevailing social tendencies of monocentricity, privatisation andidealist ind ividualism; or are these messages m erely received at a d istance as entertain-ing reflections of an outd ated m ode of relating to current reality? Obviously, receptionof such consensus mu sic (Ha mm 1981) will vary considerably between different cul-tures, subcultures, classes and groups. Thus, whereas parts of the fourth audience(ibid.) may well be able to iden tify w ith the affective attitud es towa rd s love, fam ily, so-ciety and natu re (on natu re in m usic, see Rebscher 1976, Rsing 1977, Tagg 1982) pre-sented in su ch TV mu sic as Kojak or in such m iddle-of-the-road pop as Fernando, it isclear that many will be unable to identify. This raises yet another question: how doesthe latter type of listener relate to prevailing ideologies and attitud es both in mu sic andin society at large?

    A n al y sin g su bcu lt u ral m u sic codes in in du st rial ised societ y

    The way in which counter-cultures and subcultures express their own stand, profileand group identity in extramusical terms has been d ocum ented in num erous studies(see the work of the Centre for Contemporary Studies at the University of Birming-ham). However, the musical coding of such identities is an underdeveloped field ofstudy. There are adm ittedly nu merous accounts of trend s within Afro-American mu -sic, but few of these deal with th e actual mu sical code of the coun ter-cultur e or subcul-ture in qu estion. This could be because no real theory yet exists wh ich explains how theprevailin g attitudes, patterns of behaviour and ideology of late capitalism are encodedin the mu sical mainstream of popu lar mu sics such as signatu re tunes, Muzak, adv ertis-ing music, middle-of-the-road pop and rock, etc. In fact, it appears that the study of

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    was certainly no time to sp end more than a few m inutes talking about single pieces ofmusic.

    The metho ds of interobjective comp arison, of establishing correspond ence between th e

    IOCM and its EMFA and then between the musical code of the analysis object (AO/IMC) and th e extramu sical fields of association connected w ith the interob jective com-parison m aterial (IOCM/ EMFA) (see Fig. 3) can be carried ou t by an yone w illing to ex-ercise their synaesthetic and associative capacities as well as their intellect. Anymu sician can carry ou t simp le HS (hyp othetical substitution ) and , w ith a tape record er,tape, a razor blade and a reasonable ear, anyone can even m anage to reassemble a p roc-essual HS. Anyone w ith a bit of imagination can sing bits of tune in the w rong ord er,or substitute new continuations, and thereby d iscover wh at actually m akes the mu sicsay wh at it says.

    In other word s the analysis of popu lar mu sic should in no way be considered a job re-served for experts (although I will ad m it that describing its mecha nisms m ay requ iresome specialist knowledge). The sort of analytic model presented here shou ld rather be

    seen as an effort to underpin intellectually that form of affective and implicit humancommunication which occupies parts of the average Westerners brain during onequa rter of his/ her w aking life. (Can any oth er form of comm un ication rival this, qua n-titatively?) Analysing pop ular m usic should as be seen as som ething w hich counteractssplit brain tendencies, resists the sort of mental apartheid advocated by the newspa-pers qu oted a t the start of this article and b reaks the schizophren ic taboos proh ibitingcontact between ver bal and nonv erbal, explicit and imp licit, public and p rivate, collec-tive and ind ividual, work an d leisure. Analysing popu lar mu sic takes the fun serious-ly and is itself both a serious business anda lot of fun . {66}

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